


Siberia

by hands_off



Category: Banana Fish (Anime & Manga)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M, M/M, demisexual ash lynx
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-19
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-04 07:45:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 809
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16342679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hands_off/pseuds/hands_off
Summary: Ash dreams of more than just rivers of blood when he recovers in the hospital.Spoilers up to ep. 14.





	Siberia

**Author's Note:**

> I kind of always wanted more when it came to the story of Arthur and Ash and also the unnamed girl that died for no other reason than being close to Ash. This is one of my attempts to deal with that.

 

* * *

 

 

 

 

She appears out of a mist, slowly taking shape. His heart clenches for a moment, thinking it’s his mother.

“Hey there,” her voice calls to him; he turns toward it, recognizing the voice, so it can’t be his mother.

She steps out of the mist, the rest of her features coming into view. 

“Didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” he says, more to himself than the girl.

He remembers what they did to her. 

She doesn’t look like that now. 

“Does this mean I’m dead?” Seeing her, like this-seems rather-painful for death. 

“No,” she answers, and the blank mistiness of the place surrounding them fades away; he recognizes this place, recognizes this run down apartment.

“So about Arthur,” she says as she takes a seat on the busted couch. “I’m sorry that he turned out that way.”

“I tried to leave him alone,” he says, but he doesn’t really believe his own words. He had left Arthur alone in the sense that he never attacked him, let him continue to hang around despite his plans and attempts to undermine his authority; but he’d never truly left him  _alone_  either. 

But Shorter-

He couldn’t forgive that. 

“He meant well, once,” she says, beckoning for him to come sit with her. 

He shuffles closer, not quite believing that she’s there. 

(He knows that it’s not real, that she died, broken and bleeding in his arms.)

But it still seems real, her hand warm against his. 

“I spoke with him, you know. When he arrived.”

“Did you now?” He doesn’t care, Arthur was dead to him a long time ago. 

“In a strange way, he held the same goal as you...I shouldn’t have asked you to leave him alone,” she continues, pulling him closer to sit beside her.

“I told you anything,” he counters as he moves to sit. 

For a death dream, it’s pretty realistic; the couch even sucks him down like it used to, creaky piece of crap that it was.

He remembers telling her on this couch, remembers talking over popcorn and shitty cable about his plan (his stupid  _fucking_  dream) of running away and getting out from under Dino. 

He’d had a plan of course, he always had a plan.  

But that plan had hinged on the fact that he would eventually age up and out of Dino’s preference; that had been a wrong assumption even if he’d seen it happen before; even if he’d watched other talented young ‘pets’ move on.

It doesn’t surprise him to learn that Arthur wanted Dino dead. Arthur has been many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.

Arthur wasn’t wrong in his assumptions; her death was a result of her association with him. It’s because of him that she died, his flame burning up the ones closest to him.

Proximity was not the same as pulling a trigger; someone had to order the hit. Arthur knew that.

Arthur has also never been able to play the long game, a game of years and years in the making.

But she’s in front of him, dead or alive, drug dream or not, and he opens his mouth.

“I’m so-“

She leans closer, presses her finger to his lips. 

God, her _face_ - 

It looks so much better whole.  

“Don’t,” she whispers, moving her finger away, “I’m the one who’s sorry.”

“No,” he manages to say, his voice small as she takes her hands in his own. 

“You were so careful, always. And I- I didn’t understand. Not truly. You kept that from me.”

“I’m the  _reason_  you’re dead! They made it a  _lesson_!”

“I never blamed you.”

He jumps up, balance off from the stupid couch and her hand gripping his own.

“You asked me once if I wished we never met. I didn’t then and I don’t now. Even though it ended the way it did. I’d even choose it again.”

“Why?” he manages to ask, voice broken. 

“Love,” she smiles, twining her fingers with his. “I’ve waited here to tell you that. I would have waited forever for you.”

He freezes, thoughts rushing him like the tide, because he still has things to do, he’s still playing the long game and-

_Eiji_. 

“He’s beautiful,” she continues in that way of hers, tugging his hand and dragging him back to wherever they are.

“That’s what I wanted for you, you know. It’s what I asked for, in the end.”

Her words bubbling out with the warm spill of blood through his fingers, too far gone and begging for him to be happy- 

“You know, it wasn’t so bad. I mean in the end,” she smiles, and he can feel something change; the world starting to mist over again.

“The last thing I saw was you,” her hand squeezed tighter, her face blurring out again.

“Not a bad way to go, honestly.”

 

* * *

 


End file.
